Youth: Life at Its Peak in "Sonnet 15" by William Shakespeare

Along with similes, Shakespeare also uses metaphors in order to create deeper connections and comparisons in his play. An example of Shakespeare using a metaphor to describe a situation is when Macbeth says,

Shakespeare uses metaphors and figures throughout his plays to give the reader and audience a further understanding of the story he is telling. In Metaphors We Live By, it is stated that “…Metaphorical expressions in everyday language can give us insight into the metaphorical nature of concepts that structure our everyday activities…” (Lakoff & Johnson 7). Through these conceits Shakespeare expands a normal idea and transforms it into

A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines that rhyme in a particular pattern. William Shakespeare’s sonnets were the only non-dramatic poetry that he wrote. Shakespeare used sonnets within some of his plays, but his sonnets are best known as a series of one hundred and fifty-four poems. The series of one hundred and fifty-four poems tell a story about a young aristocrat and a mysterious mistress. Many people have analyzed and contemplated about the significance of these “lovers”. After analysis of the content of both the “young man” sonnets and the “dark lady sonnets”, it is clear that the poet, Shakespeare, has a great love for the young man and only lusts after his mistress.

Although Shakespeare appears to be conforming, he still elevates his work above the exhausted conventions of other Elizabethan sonneteers. Instead of objectifying his lover through trite comparisons, he declares that she is too beautiful and pleasant to be compared even to a day of the most enjoyable season of the year. While most consider the realm of nature to be eternal and that of humans to be transitory, Shakespeare accentuates the death of a season and imbues his sweetheart with everlasting life. He ingeniously inverts the scheme of things in order to grant his love perpetual existence through his poetry.

The age of adolescence has gained a reputation of being a strange and pessimistic part of the life. Many Adults look down on teenagers because of the growth of problems that stem from their questionable decision making skills on very important decisions that would affect them during for the rest of their adolescence and adulthood life. This state of life has been looked down upon ever since the 16th century. As seen from the story Romeo and Juliet where Shakespeare shows teenagers as most stereotypes shown them, as people who does not think about the risk that comes with some of the situations they’re in. From this it can be said the Shakespeare sees the adolescents in a negative view because of their ways of impractical thinking where they don’t think about what the decision they make during that age could affect them later in life and risk everything for one thing and show how the teenage brain acts on an impulse which he shows via the adolescent characters in the play, Romeo and Juliet.

Millay and Shakespeare enforce into the audience the negative effects time has on a person after a while in “Sonnet 73,” and “Sonnet II,” through the use of a dreary tone. The speaker in,”Sonnet 73,” states that youth eventually ends up on,”The death-bed whereon it must expire”(11). The use of phrases such as ”death-bed,” to enforce the idea of youth ending add on to the dreary tone as “death-bed” has to do with something dying, which in this case is the youth of a person. The use of words such as “death-bed,” not only add to the dreary tone, but they also further present how terrible it is to leave one’s youth, which is an event that every person must face as time goes on, and age increases. Another example adding to the dreary tone is when the speaker discusses the,”Bare ruined choirs”(4). The use of the words “Bare,” and “Ruined” add on to the dreary tone because something that is “Bare,” means nothing is there, no real life exists in that place. The use of “Bare,” and “Ruined” also engrave the idea of how bad leaving one’s youth is by the speaker comparing that to how he feels as

For this response I will focus on Sonnets 1, 18, and 130. In Sonnet 1, I noticed how the themes of beauty and human life and introduced. Sonnet 1 starts off by saying that no one lives forever, and in order to keep the beauty, people need to have children. It then continues to say that some people are obsessed with their beauty and keep it for themselves. These people are encouraged to change their ways or less their beauty will start to fade and eventually disappear. I believe that Sonnet 1 is urging people to help the world by having children.

Made up of three quatrains and couplet in iambic pentameter, Sonnet 1 contains the common thread of encouraging procreation, however each has a small topic shift that defines the tone of the quatrain. The first quatrain is an axiom, ending with the line “His tender heir might bear his own memory” signifying to the reader the speaker’s purpose behind their argument. By structuring the sonnet this way Shakespeare uses a structure that is similar to some persuasive arguments in real life. The rhyme scheme also helps to reflect this as Shakespeare uses the ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme to draw the reader’s attention to word that strengthen the speaker’s argument. An example of this is the rhyme between ‘’spring’’ and ‘’niggarding’’ in the third quatrain.

Poets and authors alike evoke emotion and pictures from one single word. The imagery and thoughts put into the readers’ heads by these different writers are the base of one’s creativity and imagination while reading the author’s work of art. William Shakespeare is one of the most well-known poets of all time that is able to elicit these emotions from the reader to allow the reader to fully understand what Shakespeare is trying to accomplish with his poems. Shakespeare keeps his audience entertained with a whopping 154 sonnets, each having a different meaning and imagery associated with it. Sonnet 18, “[Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day]”, and Sonnet 55, “[Not Marble, nor the Gilded Monuments]”, are both one of Shakespeare’s most famous works. Shakespeare uses these sonnets to explore the powerful relationship between humanity, art, and time.

Shakespeare wanting these sonnets to go to the young man, in order to persuade him into a pro life and a procreation lifestyle, repeated the message in order to get his point across. The stories that are told or the examples that are placed within the sonnets do not repeat. Yet with the message, as well as the light and dark compare and contrast happening, helps to Shakespeare to get his point across to the young man. The young man, being the audience of the sonnets, was the audience for all of them. Since he was the one and only person that these were meant for, Shakespeare was able to personalize the work of sonnets in order to make certain that the message hit home with the young man.

Shakespeare’s sonnets are considered to be some of the greatest and most eloquent poems in all of English literature. So by analyzing his genius in poetry and style, scholars and ordinary readers alike, try to understand the genius in the poet. There is very little known of Shakespeare’s personal life or feelings he had about himself. This being so a lot of scholars focus on his style and way of saying things to try and get a better understanding of Shakespeare the person. Many scholars have tried to get an insight into shakespeare by analyzing how and what he wrote. Many poets use poetry as a way to express their feelings and emotions, so readers of Shakespeare should be able to start to grasp a picture of who he was by reading his poetry and paying attention to the similarities and unique differences of his work to the norm of the day.

Shakespeare’s work is littered with metaphors; some which require careful reading to pick up on, while others are easily detectable. Simon Palfrey states that “Shakespeare’s

Shakespeare’s sonnet 60 expresses the inevitable end that comes with time and uses this dark truth to express his hopefulness that his poetry will carry his beloved’s beauty and worth into the future in some way so that it may never die. This love poem is, as all sonnets are, fourteen lines. Three quatrains form these fourteen lines, and each quatrain consists of two lines. Furthermore, the last two lines that follow these quatrains are known as the couplet. This sonnet has the rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, as most Shakespearean sonnets follow. In each of the three quatrains, Shakespeare discusses a different idea. In this particular sonnet, the idea is how time continues to pass on, causing everything to die. The couplet connects these ideas to one central theme, this theme being Shakespeare’s hope for the beauty of his beloved’s immortality through his poetry’s continuation into future times.

     The sonnet, being one of the most traditional and recognized forms of poetry, has been used and altered in many time periods by writers to convey different messages to the audience. The strict constraints of the form have often been used to parallel the subject in the poem. Many times, the first three quatrains introduce the subject and build on one another, showing progression in the poem. The final couplet brings closure to the poem by bringing the main ideas together. On other occasions, the couplet makes a statement of irony or refutes the main idea with a counter statement. It leaves the reader with a last impression of what the author is trying to say.

By exploring and employing different stylistic devices, most specifically his use of hyperbolic language and rhetorical imagery, the poet attempts to convince the youth that he must defeat time through ‘the fame, repute, harmony, and reproduced image of an heir.’ However, following his failed attempts at convincing the youth to marry, in Sonnet 60, Shakespeare wants to assure the youth that his beauty will be preserved nonetheless. Since the youth’s beauty cannot be passed on through his offspring, the poet convinces the youth that his beauty shall transcend time through his own writing which gives praise to the young man. In order to convince the young man, the poet resorts once again to imagery so as to foreground his argument about time’s “cruel hand” that passes relentlessly, devouring human life in the process. The poet thus invokes different images in each of the three quatrains to illustrate the passage of